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Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport CEO Sean Donohue told the airport board Thursday that help is coming for long lines at the airport international entry points – the U.S. Custom and Border Protection will add another 40 people.

“That’s great news for us,” Donohue said, to applause from the board and spectators.

Then he tempered the good news. “We’re not going to see these people for this summer.”

The planning and hiring horizon is maybe 12 to 18 months, as Congress authorized the addition of 2,000 CBP personnel throughout its system.

“But the most important news is we have another 40 people coming to D/FW,” Donohue said.

Last year, people arriving at D/FW on international flights were suffering through hours of waits on many days as they stood in line to go through CBP checkpoints.

The airport and CBP worked together to install automated passport control to let people get processed more quickly. But the airport needed more federal people working the crowd.

Airline analyst Helane Becker of Cowen and Co. touched a sore spot Wednesday when she asked Delta Air Lines chief executive officer Richard Anderson how things were going at Delta’s new terminal at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.

It gave Anderson an opportunity to go off on U.S. Customs and Border Protection. We’ve written several times about the long entry waits at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport; Anderson indicated it was a big problem at U.S. airports.

After saying that the new terminal was being well received by Delta customers, Anderson turned to the entry issue and made these comments. They’re a little disjointed, but you get what he’s saying:

“I think the main challenge –and candidly I must say I think it’s an embarrassment for our government that as much as we as an industry pay into Customs And Border Patrol that we have issues at not just JFK but at Newark, at Chicago, at Los Angeles where we cannot seem to get our government to perform a very basic service.

“And those of us that travel extensively around the world and go to countries like Japan and China and Europe, Customs is a breeze. And in the U.S. despite all the investment that we make as an industry – we collect a fee from every passenger – we cannot get the kinds of levels of support; that if we’re going to grow our economy in the U.S., travel and tourism is an important part of that equation and it’s one that needs to be fixed and that we’re pursuing every avenue in Washington and in Congress to get this problem solved. The answer shouldn’t be to outsource JFK to Abu Dhabi.”

The last sentence was reference to U.S. support for a preclearance facility at Abu Dhabi for travelers headed to the United States.

Anderson said the industry’s trade group, Airlines for America, and its CEO, Nick Calio, were doing a good job keeping the issue to the forefront. There’s appropriation legislation in Congress to increase funding, he said.

He also pointed out that he appeared on a task force for the U.S. Commerce Secretary several years ago that also looked at the issue, and sent a series of recommendations to the executive branch.

“And so far, our government has failed to provide the level of service that we should be providing if we want to see the third most important industry in the U.S., travel and tourism, continue to grow and contribute to a growing GDP,” he said.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday that it has provided a $10 million grant to continue work to extend the runways at Alliance Airport in Fort Worth.

The FAA said:

“The FAA Airport Improvement Program grant will pay for continued work to extend each of Alliance’s two runways to 11,000 feet. The project has been underway for several years and involves extensive work to relocate a nearby state highway and a railroad to make way for the longer runways. The entire project is expected to be complete in 2016.”

Alliance, which opened in 1989, has runways of 9,600 feet and 8,200 feet.

American Airlines currently has a major maintenance base at Alliance, but plans to close that facility. Other occupants at Alliance, according to the airport, include Bell Helicopter, Dallas Jet International, Executive Jet Management, FAA AFS Flight Program Office, FedEx Southwest Regional Hub, Peregrine Point, Solairus Aviation and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.